filesListFolder slow

[filipengstrom91]

Hi, 

I use the Dropbox webhook to start a Javascript function I've written. It worked great the first few months when the folders just contained a few files. Now they contain approximately 200-250 files and it takes approximately 30 seconds to fetch all the files with filesListFolder function. This amount of time surely can't be normal, I want to be able to use it as my folders grows with files. The following lines of code are where I figure the problem is:

const fetch = require('isomorphic-fetch'); // or another library of choice.
const Dropbox = require("dropbox").Dropbox;
const dbx = new Dropbox({ accessToken: 'T-BxAk********************************************Cn2eeFT', fetch: fetch });
const response = await dbx.filesListFolder({ path: "/Redovisning/", recursive: true, limit: 5 })
let cursor = response.cursor;
let hasMore = response.has_more;

const entriesArray = [response.entries];

while (hasMore === true) {
let responseWhile = await dbx.filesListFolderContinue({ cursor: cursor });
hasMore = responseWhile.has_more;
cursor = responseWhile.cursor;
for (entry of responseWhile.entries) {
entriesArray.push(entry);
}
}
console.log(entriesArray);

Thanks

[Greg-DB · Accepted solution]

There are a number of variables that can affect the overall performance here, so we can't promise any specific speed for listing a folder. Looking at your code though, there are a few things that may help:

• You're using "limit: 5", which will limit Dropbox to returning about 5 entries per page. Since you need to make an HTTP request and response for each page, using a small limit like that will increase the overhead and increase how long the entire process takes. If you don't need to use a small page size like that for some reason, switching to a larger number may speed this up.
• You're using "recursive: true", which can increase how much work Dropbox has to do to list out the entries. If you don't need nested entries, switching this to "recursive: false" may speed this up.

[filipengstrom91]

Thank you for your reply. Changing the limit to 2000 solved my problem. It now loads within a couple of seconds. I realise that I didn't understand what limit meant. Thanks!